Irish Lotto reaches €12M as lotto machines crash

Your chances may be higher than usual tonight for the Irish Lotto as fewer people have been able to purchase tickets

Lotto customers looking to purchase a ticket experienced problems earlier today as machines went down as a result “technical difficulties”.

A statement from the National Lottery this morning read: “We are aware of the issue and are working towards resolution”.

This isn’t the first time the company has come under fire for technical issues. Last February, up to 3,500 terminals were out of commission for several hours.

The problem forced the franchise to defer a midweek draw for the first time in the lotto’s history.

PLI blamed the problems on a service outage at its telecoms provider Telefónica.

The National Lottery have now issued a statement saying that their terminals and website are now back online, but some customers are still reporting issues.

“The National Lottery confirms that the retail network has been restored and lottery sales resumed as of 12.45pm,” PLI said in a statement.

According to National Lottery data, sales can jump by as much as 80 per cent when jackpots reach €10 million, but with these issues this morning, the sales numbers are yet to be confirmed. Expected stats could be affected.

Tonight’s €12 million jackpot is the biggest since June, 2014, when a two-person syndicate from Donegal scooped €12,155,282.